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Googology Wiki:Policy
The big picture Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Most of the following rules are specific applications of that principle. Wiki philosophy Googology Wiki is an encyclopedia and discussion forum about large numbers and fast-growing functions. Similar to the fact that wikipedia has no firm rules, we have no firm rules. Sometimes improving Googology wiki requires making exceptions. Be bold, but not reckless, in updating articles. And do not agonize over making mistakes: (almost) every past version of a page is saved, so mistakes can be easily corrected. Original work (READ THIS !) Probably the single most common mistake made by newcomers to the wiki is to show up and dump their latest invention into the encyclopedia. The point of the encyclopedia is to document published googologisms and ultimately unite the scattered literature of large numbers. It's a mirror, not a publishing platform. The recommended way to get your work on the wiki is to ' '. Blogs offer a free and easy way to broadcast your creations to the community, and you can get feedback from other googologists in the form of comments. Original work on the wiki is allowed as long as it is cited from a good source (in compliance with Rule X), but if it is low-quality enough a poll will be posted in the talk section of the created page, and after three days the majority vote will decide whether the page stays or goes. User interactions Be nice. Don't attack other users personally. Be a decent human being. Don't make actions or statements discriminating against anyone based on race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, etc. Don't bite the newbies New GWikians may stumble a bit while learning the ropes. Don't bite them! Clean up after them and, if necessary, courteously let them know what was wrong. There's a lesson in every mistake. Assume good faith A sufficiently bad mistake is hard to distinguish from malice. Whenever possible, assume good faith. Chat There's a allowing you to talk to other users, as well as a Googology Discord. Of course, the usual rules of employing common sense and being a decent person apply. Notability On wikis, we have to be constantly deciding whether an article should be created or not for each number and concept. The following are some general rules of thumb: * Numbers and functions should be mathematically well-defined, or at least an attempt at being mathematically well-defined. A number defined as "infinity plus 42" is not acceptable unless it is significant enough in pop culture. * Numbers: ** Pretty much any number greater than 100 is fine. We allow integers 0 to 99, but any irrational constants like e or \(\sqrt{2}\) are generally not allowed. ** Named numbers are much preferred over unnamed ones. There are a good number of exceptions to this however. * Transfinite numbers: ** Even when they're only tangentially relevant to googology, ordinals, cardinals and related functions are fine. * Functions: ** They should grow fast enough to be related to googology. As a general rule of thumb, things that grow slower than factorial are not acceptable. Addition and multiplication are fine because they form the basis of the hyperoperators. ** Googologists are mostly concerned with functions mapping counting numbers to counting numbers. Functions like \(e^x\) map naturals to irrationals and thus are not easily analyzable with standard googological tools. As usual, exceptions are common; use your own discretion and discuss in case of controversy. * Other stuff: ** Some articles don't directly describe large numbers or functions, but rather systems that give rise to them. Examples include Goodstein sequences and Latin squares. * People: ** Someone who has made a useful enough contribution to Googology and whose presence has been acknowledged by other members of the community may have an article written about them. However, a user must not write an article about themselves, and new users shouldn't have articles written about them. Citations Googology Wiki is intended as a reflection of large number literature, online and offline. It is not the place to introduce new googology. The point of this rule is to make Googology Wiki a well-documented piece of work, not a place where people can dump their trivial salad numbers. Good sources include: * Blog posts (see below) * Academic papers * Textbooks and other reliable print sources * Articles from reputable websites * Self-published books, papers, and websites. Googology Wiki doesn't have a conflict of interest policy, and it's acceptable to write articles about your own work. Bad sources include: * Wikipedia * Forums and other wikis. There are some exceptions such as c2wiki's famous ReallyBigNumbers page, where many well-known googologisms come from. * Private communications * Other pages within Googology Wiki All this said, there is some leeway with original content. While Wikipedia considers itself a tertiary source, Googology Wiki is a secondary source. Our articles frequently offer commentary, analysis, and explanations of the source material (although it should be neutral and objective if possible). It's acceptable and common to discuss and analyze existing googology. Readers should note that such commentaries are not subject to academic review, in contrast to some of our sources. Blog posts It is allowed to put content from blog post to the mainspace under the voting system. If somebody thinks that the blog post is well-qualified, it is possible to propose to add info to the mainspace from it and add that post to the source. Only non-blocked users that were registered for at least 100 days (10 of them they were active) and 100 edits may vote to avoid abusing the voting system. Voting holds for 10 days. We are voting for blog posts here. Categories It is allowed to put blog posts in categories, but not to mainspace categories - they should be placed on separate categories for blog posts. When posting In line with this forum post, all counting blogs are banned. This does not include well-thought out competitions designed to spark serious thought, but rather posts which are quickly filled with comments which it doesn't take much thought to type. When commenting Think before you comment. Comments which are entirely unrelated to the message of the blog post or are trivial salad extensions of the concepts discussed in the post are frowned upon. Vandalism Vandalism is a deliberate attempt to harm the integrity of the encyclopedia. If you encounter vandalism, revert it and leave the owner a firm but respectful message to stop. If the vandalism persists, contact an administrator and they'll deal with it the way they see fit. Edit war An edit war happens when two or more editors have a dispute, and instead of discussing things out, they revert back and forth between the revisions they want. Edit wars are not productive in any way, and generally just make people more angry. Instead of edit warring, talk it over and come to a decision. In an effort to fight counterproductive edit warring, we will mirror the 3RR rule as found on Wikipedia: :Any editor who makes more than three reverts on the same page within a 24-hour period will be blocked for 24 hours. Self-reversion and reversion of obvious vandalism do not count towards this. The purpose of 3RR blocks — and any other blocks, for that matter — are to prevent further disruption, not to punish misbehavior. Undefined notation Undefined notation is when a wiki page introduces a notation but never specifies what it actually is. This is the most common with OCFs. You must specify the specific notation used, otherwise, your addition may be removed. The undefined notation template should be used whenever a notation isn't defined or it is different from the actual notation used in the article. Copyright Do not upload a material in a way violating copyright! You are not allowed to upload unlicensed materials which you do not have copyright or permission by copyright-holders. Such a violation is prohibitted by FANDOM's term of use, FANDOM's licensing rule, CC BY-SA 3.0 under which Googology Wiki is itself licensed, and local laws applicable to you. If an uploaded material does not have a description which tell us that it does not violate the copyright, then it is a target of quick-deletion. When you upload licensed materials, then add sufficient information so that other members can understand the status of the license. For more details, see the following official help pages: * How to add copyrighted content * How to make its copyright status clear * Licensing in FANDOM Original writing is preferred to copied writing, even when we are allowed to reproduce the copied text (e.g. when copying from Wikipedia). Of course, plagiarism is unacceptable. *